With the rapid development in communication technology and the diversification of consumer electronic devices, the function and structure of consumer electronic devices become increasingly complex. Repair of a malfunctioning electronic device may require complex disassembly and troubleshooting involving many components of the device. Such procedure is very time-consuming and may cause further damage to the electronic device.
In order to solve the foregoing problem, a computing system typically includes a set of programs called basic input/output system (BIOS) that is stored in a memory for detecting hardware failures in the computing system. When the system is powered on, the BIOS immediately takes control of the computer system and its components. The BIOS first performs a series of diagnostic routines called Power On Self Test (POST), which ensures that every part of the system's hardware, such as memory controller, keyboard controller, communication controller, or hard disk controller, is functioning properly. The POST is capable of generating a variety of error messages, which are sent to the input/output (I/O) port (sometimes called “port 80”). The error message indicates the location of the system malfunction, thereby facilitating repair of the failure.
In addition, BIOS code may be stored in a memory of a target apparatus in a program development system, and debugging commands may be transmitted from a host apparatus to the target apparatus for debugging the BIOS code. In this case, a variety of connecting ports may be arranged between the target apparatus and the host apparatus. For example, the target apparatus may be a computing system which adopts a universal serial bus (USB) to send information, while the host apparatus may be a microprocessor which adopts an inter integrated circuit (I2C) bus to send information. Therefore, there is a need to dispose an adapter between different connecting ports of the corresponding apparatuses to provide a communication path between the target apparatus and the host apparatus.